


Slow Returns

by o666666



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Episode: s08e15 DeadAlive, Post-Episode: s08e16 Three Words, tw: PTSD, tw: reproductive trauma, tw: self-medication, tw: suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:01:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22762129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o666666/pseuds/o666666
Summary: The best day of her life, she thinks: when Mulder comes back. She argues and argues to treat him and to save him, as though running slow, through water.“Who are you?” he jokes when he wakes up, and she is so grateful. She wants to tell him Go easy, I am barely off the sauce, and Please only be exactly yourself.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 8
Kudos: 132





	Slow Returns

She was running as though in a bad dream, as though through water. She could not move fast enough; she didn’t. Doggett found her screaming on her knees and when he helped her up, she could not keep her balance. Her legs tingled, and her speech was slurred. The second time he’d carried her someplace. He’d sat her in his passenger seat—they could follow Mulder’s body to the hospital—when he’d said “Mulder’s body,” she’d moaned—and she could get checked out there too. She had wanted to tell him, _It’s a fight or flight response. It’s a panic attack. All my blood is going to my heart. That is why I can’t feel my legs. That is why I am sweating. That is why I am slurring and breathing hard._

Her mother comes to get her. Mulder’s body, pronounced DOA, is behind an ER curtain, and soon someone will come to take him to the morgue. 

“I have to go,” she tells her, when they roll him out.

“No, Dana,” her mother says, holding on to her arm, because she cannot really get up from her seat, because the attending nurse had insisted she take a sedative. ( _Pregnant_ , she’d told the nurse. _It’s safe for you_ , the nurse had told her, as she knew already. Still, she hadn’t wanted to risk it. If Mulder was parenting a baby, carrying a baby, he’d do it like a hippie, a homeopath, like her sister. Like if he wanted the baby he might try to sell her on some big, inflatable in-home birthing tub and its potential for multiple uses, and she would look at him fake-annoyed and say _No, Mulder_.

She hadn’t want to risk the sedative because she had not protected Mulder properly. She had not protected their family properly. And she could not afford another mistake. But when someone handed her a bag of Mulder’s “belongings”—the blanket he’d had wrapped around him in the ambulance—she’d wailed. And Doggett had said, _Dana_. And the nurse had offered again, and she’d accepted the pill because her hands were shaking too hard to hold the blanket in its large Ziploc baggie.)

She watches Mulder on the gurney, down the hall, through the doors, feeling like a deserter. 

“I don’t want him down there alone,” she cries into her mother’s shoulder. She thinks of their basement and how desperately, madly he is wanted. Needed beyond want.

“He’s here with you, Dana.”

“My—" she chokes. _My husband_ , she thinks. How when they told her she was pregnant, before they told her he was gone, she’d imagined them together forever. _My partner_. “My baby,” she says instead, low and keening, holding her stomach.

-

Later, when the medicine wears off, when her nervous system is no longer depressed, when her mother drives her home, she will cling to Maggie’s shoulders on her sofa. “I can’t do this, Mom,” she will weep, hyperventilating. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” 

Maggie rocks her like a child. She reminds Dana that she’d taken home a prescription for panic attacks as needed. After the first dose Doggett had talked to Maggie in hushed tones. _Mrs. Scully… after she saw him, she was just layin’ on the ground_.

Dana takes it to go to sleep. Dana takes it for the funeral. Dana takes it to reduce the premature urge to nest, to reduce her conviction that she is already an inadequate mother. 

-

The best day of her life, she thinks: when Mulder comes back. She argues and argues to treat him and to save him, as though running slow, through water.

“Who are you?” he jokes when he wakes up, and she is so grateful. She wants to tell him _Go easy, I am barely off the sauce_ , and _Please only be exactly yourself._

-

She leaves him at the hospital to pick up her car and his change of clothes, and when she returns, she is barely holding it together. She wants to take something, but if he sees her, she thinks he will disapprove, and regardless, she needs to drive him home.

It makes her heart beat fast and fearful to even think of leaving him alone. To even think of being apart. 

“Whatever neurological disorder you were suffering from, it’s no longer detectable,” she assures him. He eyes her suspiciously, as though he is confused as to why she is not furious with him for not telling her of the aforementioned. Maybe when their family is together and whole and safe in her arms, she will worry about trivialities like his lies, or his long betrayal.

She goes on, “The scars on your face… on your hands, on your feet, on your chest… they seem to be repairing themselves.” He touches his face, and she wonders if anyone has yet given him a mirror. 

She tells him he is in perfect health. She means, _I will always take care of you. I will never let this happen to you again. You have always been perfect._

“Wow,” he says. 

“How do you feel?” the doctor asks. 

Mulder is glib. He borrows her deadpan humor. “Like Austin Powers.” She has missed, missed, missed him.

-

At Hegel Place, she insists that she carry his bag. He is distracted by the familiar and does not argue, which makes her feel displaced, like she’s out of line for needing tenderness, specifically his. Inside his apartment, her chest gets tight. A lump comes to her throat.

She wants him to smile at her for preserving this space, here, for them. She wants him to say _Remember the last time we were on that couch, Scully?_ and waggle his eyebrows. She wants his approval, his assurance that she has done enough because here they are, together.

She fights, failingly, for control of her breath. Her palms begin to sweat. She digs her nails into the skin. 

“Something looks different,” he says. She twists her fingers, his perusal making her nervous.

“It’s clean.” Her arms are numb, her legs are numb. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth.

“Ah, that’s it.” And then, “Missing a molly.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “She wasn’t as lucky as you.” _Stay positive_ , she tells herself, _be positive, make him comfortable, it’s all on you._ If she fails to make his return to Earth run smooth, she will fail this baby, their baby, again.

She wonders at his grimace if she deserves to be a mother, to be entrusted with his child. If she is worthy of his love. She’s wanted him back, but she’s wanted him _for her_.

“Mulder,” she says, trailing off at the second syllable because her voice sounds unnatural to her ears. She knows she is dissociating for self-preservation, feels her soul leave her body like a snake from old skin.

“I don’t know if you’ll ever understand what it was like.”

He stares.

“First learning of your abduction, and then finding you dead…”

Mulder nods.

Her flat affect is a poor ruse. She has wanted nothing more than for him to be there for her for months, but she can’t ask it of him, she won’t, not yet. She panics that he can smell it on her, the desperation, and resents it.

It is still her turn to be strong. Everything still depends on her. 

“… And now, to have you back…” her voice rises and cracks.

“Well, you act like you’re surprised.” He Vanna White-s himself. The strength to stay positive leaves her.

“I prayed a lot,” she tells him. “And my prayers have been answered.” Her vision blurs. She always cries.

“In more ways than one.” His first acknowledgement of their child. All she’s ever wanted, and now it is up to her to make it work, save them all.

“Yeah.”

“I’m happy for you.” His nodding is so fucking… fake. “I think I know… how much that means to you.” It ruins her composure.

She thinks, _This isn’t how it’s supposed to be._ And, still, even with him in front of her, _Oh my god, I can’t do it._

Her lips tremble; she can feel her face crumple; she can feel it go numb; she looks like a little girl. “Mulder—”

He’s saying something to make her stop crying—“I don’t mean to be cold or ungrateful”—but _she should be the one doing all the work_ , and then the zinger: “I just, I have no idea where I fit in… right now. I just… I’m having a little trouble… processing everything.”

_Well, me fucking too._

-

She offers to give him a little space. She leaves his apartment building and crosses the street and realizes she cannot drive home when her hands shake so badly that she struggles to find her keys in her purse. In the driver’s seat, she watches them tremble on the wheel.

And she hears it again: _I don’t really know where I fit in_.

And she feels it: the paralyzing fear that if she leaves him alone, he will not be here when she gets back.

The baby moves. She has to protect them both. He would never forgive her if she didn’t protect them both; already he hasn’t forgiven her; _you act like you’re surprised_.

She had wanted to run from Mulder’s apartment, to make him comfortable, to give him space, but she can’t leave, she has to protect them, what if something happens to Mulder while she is gone, what would she tell her baby then. She’d thought of him— _My husband_ , because none of her claims to him felt adequate—she’d thought: _what will we do without him_. They couldn’t do anything without him. After they found him, she hadn’t left her apartment for a week, not until Maggie implored her to take out the trash otherwise she’d never return to Baltimore. (She hadn’t even wanted Maggie to leave. She hadn’t even been capable of caring for herself alone.)

And now he’s back, but he doesn’t know where he fits in. And she doesn’t know where she fits in if _he_ doesn’t know, because she’d always assumed it would be—she can’t even think it, only: _what if something happens if I drive away_.

So she doesn’t. She heaves big breaths. She hopes she will stop sweating. She wraps her arms around herself because weight on the chest depresses the nervous system, like burial, like a grave. She cannot take one of the pills in her purse because, though she won’t be driving, she must stay alert.

She sits across the street from Hegel Place in the driver’s seat, watching his window. She cries herself to sleep.

-

When she comes to, it’s dark out. Someone is yelling and knocking at her window. “Scully! Scully!”

She jolts awake, but still feels sluggish. Her eyes go wide, she blushes; it’s Mulder. He looks confused and horrified. A hand goes to her stomach, checking the baby— _what the fuck was she thinking, falling asleep like that_ —the other to the door. “Open the door, Scully, Jesus Christ,” he’s saying, and he’s looking at her like she’s crazy, and she’s shaking her head.

The moment it clicks for him that she is not totally _with it_ , perhaps hasn’t been for weeks or months, she sees it in his eyes.

She has failed, because she was supposed to stay awake to protect them. She remembers all her previous failures—all day today, and every day, for months. He is mad at her, she thinks. She is scared. He is going to leave her. She hasn’t even told him: _I can’t do it_. She needs some air. She needs to beg, she realizes. She unlocks the door. 

In a second, he yanks it open. His hands on her face. She sighs; it is such a relief to feel him. “Scully?” Feeling all around, fingers to her neck, checking her vital signs, checking the baby. “You okay, Scully?”

Him. Touching her. She begins to cry. She holds her stomach. “I’m sorry,” she weeps. “I’m so sorry, Mulder—”

Mulder brushing the hair from her face, Mulder looking confused. 

Mulder feeling like he has no idea where he fits in right now, but sure as hell knowing how to play her hero. 

“I’m sorry,” she’s choking, and he’s crouching by her to get a better angle, pulling her legs out of the car so her shoes dangle just above the pavement, just by his legs. “I can’t do it.”

“Shh,” he tells her, “Shh, you’re shaking. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath.” 

She shakes her head. “I can’t.” Tears leak from her eyes but she is silent except for when she inhales, tries to inhale.

“Scully,” he tells her, sternly, but soft, like in a good dream, and he smells like himself, and he’s saying her name.

She hurts. “My chest,” she tells him. 

“What’s wrong? Scully, what’s wrong, why are you in here? Have you been in here this whole time?”

“I’m sorry,” she cries. 

“What are you doing here, Scully?” he’s asking, but his voice is tender, like he’s worried, not angry.

“I’m sorry, Mulder, I didn’t mean to fall asleep, I was—I was—I was going to—I…” her mouth is open but she doesn’t know what to say, and she cannot breathe, she can’t.

“Alright,” he whispers. “It’s alright. Come here.” And then he is taking her hands, pulling her out of the car, pulling her close. The compression of her chest slows her nervous system.

“What are you doing out here, Scully?” he asks again, rocking her back and forth and back and forth. “It’s late.”

“I… I couldn’t leave.” It is easier to talk into his sweater, the one she had left the hospital to retrieve from her own apartment. 

“S’that why the pajamas under my pillow smell like you?”

She is embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I was just… keeping watch. If you… if something happened I- _I couldn’t go on, Mulder._ ” She can’t perform a moment longer, and he has always seen right through her.

“Oh, _Scully_ …” he pulls back to look at her, as if to say, finally, _Baby, you are eight months pregnant, who the fuck do you think you need to protect?_

Her chin wobbles. “I’m—”

“Shh,” he tells her. “Don’t be sorry.” And then: “It’s okay. It’s alright. _I’m here_.”

It absolves her.

She nods. She cries a little more, and says “Yeah.” After a minute, she speaks again. Her voice is high and thready. “I haven’t been… doing well, Mulder.”

He looks into her eyes and nods very seriously, comprehending.

She feels the burden leave her body. She feels partnership, at once foreign and dear.

“Come on,” he says. The first time since waking up that he has not felt helpless. “Let’s go to bed.” She nods. She is so small.

He takes her upstairs.

In bed, she tells him, “We’ve missed you so much,” and puts his hands on her stomach. And the night moves like water, like all her father’s slow returns from war.


End file.
